An active community east of the Rideau River in Ottawa.

Women and Girls’ Eyes on the Neighbourhood: Feeling Safe in Public Space

Everyone has a right to feel safe in their community. To create safe spaces, we must identify and understand what makes people feel unsafe in their neighbourhoods. This Speaker Series event will highlight a United Neighbours project undertaken by Pinecrest-Queensway Community Health Centre (PQCHC) and the City for All Women Initiative (CAWI), and funded by Crime Prevention Ottawa.

Join us to hear the inspiring stories of participants and their suggestions for increasing neighbourhood safety for women and girls. Their work explores the feelings of 16 women and girls on the topic of personal safety in public spaces. These women and girls are drawn from four (4) priority neighbourhoods in the PQCHC catchment area.

The event will feature life-sized, personally crafted canvas “body maps” that visually depict the women’s and girls’ struggles, successes and overall experiences with safety in their communities. Using a variety of artistic materials including newspaper clippings, photographs and paint, these maps are a powerful mechanism for illustrating personal experience.